Premiere: 10 March 2020 at New Covenant Church, Naperville, IL
Choir conducted by Greg Wheatley
Duration: 2’30”
Instrumentation: unaccompanied SATB voices
Performance Note:
Nunc dimittis was written in response to the death of the Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes on 1 March 2011. I had made an overly-complicated setting of this text once before as a student and had long wanted to redeem my efforts; Gomes’s unexpected passing proved the catalyst for the present composition. It’s as straightforward a piece as I’ve ever written, the text an appropriate response, I think, to the event that provoked its writing.